Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (June 15-19)

Sat, 06/20/2015 - 11:08 — Bryan Lambert

I'll be honest. Right now, it's very, very difficult to give a shit about any wrestling that doesn't involve either Kevin Owens or Lucha Underground. There wasn't even a New Japan on my DVR this week, so it just boils down to a single, hour-long match on LU, and a bunch of WWE bullshit.

LUCHA UNDERGROUND

...Prince Puma. Johnny Mundo. Iron Man. ALL NIGHT LONG.

Watching two guys wrestle for an hour is a tricky gambit. They both have to be good, there has to be a decent story, and the match needs to be booked to ebb and flow and not make it look like they're killing time or resting when they're killing time or resting. This match did all of that. The closest thing to a dead spot came around 15 minutes in, after they'd done some feeling out stuff and some regular wrestling, but before they'd started the main story of the match.

Anyway, Mundo gets a bunch of quick pinfalls after hitting Puma with a crowbar, does a lot of bragging, then there's a long sequence around an epic table spot, then Mundo starts running out the clock, only to be stopped by Alberto El Patron, who owes Mundo big time from Mundo's heel turn. And then the last ten minutes are a nail-biter to see if Puma can make up the deficit and essentially get three pinfalls on Mundo to keep his title. He does. And it was way more awesome than...

WWE MONDAY NIGHT RAW:

...which featured Kevin Owens wrestling Dolph Ziggler and then powerbombed Machine Gun Kelly off the stage. Basically, I'll be rating all the WWE shows by their Kevin Owens content this week. I don't know what the plan is for bringing Brock Lesnar back to wrestle at a throwaway PPV like Battleground, but it'll be interesting to see how they have him not beat Seth Rollins there.

In other news, not sure I enjoy Neville being the third wheel with the Prime Time Players, and Bray Wyatt "going after Roman Reigns' Family" by showing a color laser printout of a stillshot of Reigns and his daughter FROM A WWE PSA ABOUT FATHERHOOD is one of the dumbest things they've done with Wyatt to date, which is saying a lot. But I liked it more than...

WWE SMACKDOWN

...which had Owens wrestling Cesaro, which was a decent match, but I really liked Cesaro backstage instigating the match. That was fun stuff. For the rest of the show, basically see what I said about the rest of Raw, because it was essentially the same stuff. But the Owens match was better than...

WWE NXT:

...which should have taken the top spot with Owens vs. Samoa Joe, but there are two problems here. The first is that Owens is such a huge part of the main roster, and is making the NXT championship such a huge part of the main roster, that it's diminishing the championship on NXT itself. They need to have Owens drop the belt to Balor in Japan on July 4, then have Owens beat Cena for the US Title at Battleground so he doesn't lose any momentum.

The second problem is Samoa Joe. I'd hoped that a new start out of TNA and some time at the WWE Performance Center would put some of the fire back in Joe, but that doesn't seem to be the case. He's still good, but he's not great. He's got the same body type and style as Owens, but he's five years older and not as good, and pitting him against Owens just makes him suffer by direct comparison.